


We Were Both Villains

by LieutenantSaavik



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst to Fluff, F/F, Femslash, Friends to Lovers, Kissing, Mental games, Mind Games, maxinoff, mcu femslash, moffnoff, superhero girlfriends!, vision is a jackass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 08:03:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7306651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantSaavik/pseuds/LieutenantSaavik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha Romanoff and Wanda Maximoff decide to play a mental game. (This work can stand alone)</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Were Both Villains

**Author's Note:**

> Written mostly to Smother and Still by Daughter. I'd recommend listening to one or both while you read; they're beautiful songs.

“Prepare yourself,” says Wanda, waving a hand aside of Natasha’s face. Instantly, Natasha’s face goes slack, her eyes close, and she inhales sharply. “How did you do that…” she breathes, before her entire world vanishes in black, replaced by cold, white snow, trees stretching upward to a pale blue sky, and the faint scent of ash on the air.

 

Her eyes open in Russia. In a winter forest. It looks so familiar, but at the same time, wholly foreign. A faint hawk’s birdcall echoes through the trees, drifting down to the ground on the frigid winter wind. A laugh echoes in the distance. It’s so familiar. The laugh of a young girl. The laugh of someone happy.

 The sky is an icy blue. Two ice-white clouds drift slowly on the sky above. The snow on the ground in front of her, unblemished snow, glitters with light it hurts to look at. The thin trunks of the pine trees stretch up and up and up, taller than any trees Natasha has ever seen. They seem oddly stretched proportionally to her, as if she’s smaller than she is.

 Looking around, it seems that the entire landscape looks distorted. But so, so familiar. The memory plays on the edges of her mind, getting closer and closer...

Then, it hits her. Before she came into the Red Room, before she was taken by the KGB, this was her home. Which means her mom, which means her house. They’re somewhere in this forest. And the path… there it is.

 

She turns around, forgetting everything, and sprints home through the snow.

 

SLAM.

 

Right into an invisible wall, a barrier she cannot see. She frantically presses her hands against it, slamming them harshly on the smooth, frictionless surface. She hits her palms and fists against it again and again. “Let me out, let me out,” she hisses, eyes darting from side to side. She takes her Widow’s Bite and slams it into the barrier. Nothing happens. The taser connecting with the invisible wall makes no sound at all.

 The forest around her is still. Then, the same birdcall sounds. The same child’s laugh echoes. The same two clouds drift across the sky. The snow continues to glitter coldly, and Natasha realizes with a frozen shock that the path she forced through the snow no longer exists.

 

She turns back to the invisible barrier before collapsing against it. Her house is somewhere beyond this wall. Her mother, and the fireplace, and the stories they’d tell. Her memories hit her, her feet give out, and she slides down the wall towards the ground.

 

Wanda sprints forward, seeing entranced Natasha fall backward. Just as she crumples, Wanda catches her. “Natasha, Natasha,” she whispers down to her unconscious face. “You’re back. You’re alright. You’re alright!”

 

Natasha opens her eyes, then jumps directly backwards. “ _Get out of my head_ ,” she hisses. Her eyes meet Wanda’s, sparking with coldness and anger and, most cutting of all, base fear. A memory surfaces, in Wanda’s mind this time. “They can’t help being afraid of you,” Vision told her once. Wanda freezes, gut clenching, looking into Natasha’s furious eyes.

 

Then Natasha turns, turns and runs, leaving a confused and desperate Wanda behind her. “Wait,” Wanda calls out softly, a faint trace of scarlet magic lingering on her fingertips.

 

But Natasha is already gone.

 

***

 

“She was _scared_ of me, Pietro,” Wanda says, her voice breaking at her brother’s name. She’s sitting in her room in Stark Tower, speaking into the air.

 She’s taken to talking to him when she has nobody else. She knows he is dead, and she isn’t crazy (or she hopes not), but she hopes that some part of him can still hear her. She hopes that he’s still out there, somewhere; perhaps his spirit is in some sort of afterlife, a better place than the world she is in now. Perhaps he’s watching over her or protecting her.

 Though Vision would say that it’s more likely for people to need protection from _her_ , rather than the other way around.

 

Well, screw Vision.

 

“Why is she scared?” Pietro would’ve asked, tilting his head to the side, his bleached hair flopping over. Always caring, always curious.

“Our game went too far,” Wanda replied to the question that didn’t exist. “She wanted to know about my magic. Back before we fought Ultron, he told me to take all the Avengers back into the worst parts of their minds, their worst memories. Or the memories, even good ones, that they now hate the most.”

“And?”

“And Natasha asked me how I did that. She asked me to take her back to one of her memories, a happy one, so I did. I sensed a flicker of something deep in her head, a scene, a forest. And in the memory, she was happy. So I sent her there.”

“Why did she get so upset at you?” Pietro asks, concerned. He takes Wanda’s hand and sits down next to her.

No he doesn’t. Pietro’s dead. It’s just a hope. Not even real enough to be a hallucination.

 

Wanda shakes away the wish, the dream of just being hugged by him one more time.

 

“Something about the memory went wrong. I could see, in her face, that something -- that she remembered something. Something that she didn’t want to. She was happy in that memory, but then, when she traveled there, she became angry and scared. I could see her body twitching. And then she fell forwards, and I caught her, and then she ran from me.”

 

Pietro is gone. He was never there. Wanda shakes her head, collapses onto her bed, and stares at the blank white ceiling.

 

A tear is tracing its way from her eye when she hears a knock on her door.

 

***

 

Natasha runs, runs for all she’s worth. Her feet are pounding on the hard, cold floors of Stark Tower. The images fill her mind. Ballerinas dancing in a cold blue room, joints extended wildly, unnaturally. One of them falls. The girl is pulled away, screaming, and a gunshot sounds. A man in front of her, bag on his head, the pistol cool and comforting in her hand. It kicks back at her and the man slumps forward, red lifeblood spilling onto the floor. The people behind her clap. Then she’s lying on the table with the doctors above her and they’re no no stop please stop stop stop hurting me stop stop _stop-_

 

***

 

Clint finds Natasha crumpled on the floor, her back against the wall. “Nat,” he gasps in horror, immediately crouching and placing his hands beneath her, lifting her from the floor. “Natasha, Natasha, are you alright?”

Her eyes flicker open, then shut, then open. “Unhhhh,” she groans, immediately twisting away from him to support her own weight. Clint thinks for a moment just how typical of her that is -- she can’t ever stand to be seen as weak. She places her palms on the floor and pushes herself to her knees, then halfway to her feet, a hand placed on the wall to stabilize her. She’s hunched over, her hair a mess. “Go away, Barton,” she says, her voice cold, as she raises her head to meet his eyes.

“Are you okay? What the hell happened?”

“Just leave, Clint.” It softened a bit. “I’m fine. Please, just go.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Natasha, you’re hurt!”

She glares at him from between curtains of her curly hair and jerks herself further upright, though every muscle in her body is quaking, trembling like a reed in the wind.

“I just have to do this by myself. Please understand.”

Clint shakes his head obstinately. “Nat-”

“Go. Away.”

He stares into her eyes for a long moment and finally, _finally_ leaves.

“Thank you,” she whispers after him. Not just for leaving her be, but for saving her. For everything he’s done.

 

***

 

It slowly dawns on Natasha that she should apologize to Wanda. She had asked her to show her how her magic worked. And it wasn’t as if Wanda had chosen a hated memory. In fact, as a child, in that forest, in her home, she, Natasha, had been happy. But when she was taken, kidnapped for her “potential,” it all fell apart.

 

She took a step but couldn’t continue. More scenes flashed before her eyes. The austere building. The cold plinking of a piano from a room far away. “You are made of marble,” Madame B. was telling her, her sharp pale face staring down, grotesque. Marble, marble. White and cold, white and cold like the snow that once surrounded her home. The home she was taken from. Taken to the Red Room and forced to become what she is now. She saw herself so clearly again, like a picture, a child in that forest, playing. A hawk called overhead and she stretched her arms up to it. She laughed when she couldn’t reach it and gathered snow between her mittened hands, dropping as much white powder as she picked up. Two clouds drifted across the sky and she lay back, making a snow angel on the ground. Then there came something. A darkness. A car? And she was being lifted from the snow, taken into a vehicle, shoved into the back, and she was crying, screaming, and being driven away, away, away.

 

“Get ahold of yourself, Natasha,” she hissed, trying to rise. She clawed at the wall, finally standing. Two of her fingernails were cracked. One of her fingers started bleeding. “You’re stronger than this. You’re strong.”

She took a step and the memories seemed to retreat further into her mind, being replaced by the comforting reality of Stark Tower. The white ceiling above her head. The clean, precise walls that seemed to make a second home. She forced the memories further back, straightening, and took another step. Soon, she was walking towards Wanda’s room, hardly needing the wall to support her.

 

She paused right outside the door, straightening her disheveled hair and clothes. Forcing her head into an uncaring, aloof tilt, she knocked on Wanda’s door and entered.

 

Wanda looked up from the bed to see Natasha come in. Nat closed the door behind her and stepped gracefully over. “Hi,” she said, still seeming shaken. She shifted her weight onto her side and placed her hands on her hips, her typical stance. “I’m sorry I blew up at you,” she said, a bit harshly. She coughed, gave a snarky smile, and started again. “Um. It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t’ve-”

“I should not have done that to you,” said Wanda, her accent thick. A bit of mascara was running down her face and Natasha resisted the annoying urge to brush the imperfect makeup away.

“I should never have sent you to your mind. I knew better. The last time I did so, I incapacitated everyone but Clint Barton.”

“I told you to,” said Natasha. “And the memory you chose was a good one. I was happy there. You could not have known what that forest would trigger.”

Wanda shook her head. “My powers make me a witch. I know that is what you call me, regardless of whether or not you mean it well. In Sokovian culture, witches are agents of the Devil. The scarlet-red Devil who can tempt you and manipulate your mind.” She paused. “What does that make me?”

“No,” said Natasha firmly. “No, Wanda. You’re no devil.”

“I just wounded you,” she said. That is what my powers let me do. It sometimes seems that they are evil.”

“They’re only evil if you use them for evil. And do you remember Ultron? You-”

“Sided with him and tried to kill you all.”

“You destroyed him. You fought with us. And as Vision said, none of us could have done it without the others. Without you, we wouldn’t have won.”  
“Without Pietro you also wouldn’t have won.”  
Natasha nodded. “He saved Clint’s life and aided the entire team. We owe him a debt that we can’t repay.”

Wanda lifted her face from her pillow and sat up, finally wiping the mascara away.

“I can control people. I can invade their minds. That is a power that nobody should have.”

Natasha nodded, surprising Wanda by agreeing so readily. “It is wrong that the ability to do that exists in this world.”

Wanda looked down at the sheets on her bed pursed her lips, trying not to cry.

But,” Natasha said, leaning a bit closer, “if someone has to have that power, I’m glad it’s you. Because you are _good_ , Wanda. You are good and you fight for good. You’re an Avenger, and the world needs powerful people who fight for good to destroy the powerful people who fight for evil.”

Wanda looked up.

“You fought Ultron. You destroyed his bodies. You ripped out his heart. And you defended our team in the airport, because you believed it was right. And what you believe is right is right. You’re on the side of good.”  
“Like you.”

“Like me.”

 

Natasha realizes just how close she leaned in. She pulls her head back a bit, but Wanda is captivating in every sense of the word. “What’s your mind like?” Natasha asks softly, her voice just a touch husky. She clears her throat and, almost reluctantly, stands upright again. “What are you thinking about right now, Miss Maximoff?”

_Is Wanda… blushing?_

“I don’t know,” Wands says quietly. “I feel sorry. I feel sick that I can do what I can do.”

“Don’t,” says Natasha, sitting down on the bed next to Wanda. “Don’t. Because your powers are you. You are who you were before, just stronger. And if you use that strength for what’s right, then you’re better.”

She turns to her, trying to ignore how close their faces are. “Alright,” she says, settling in amongst the covers. “Why don’t you tell me more about Sokovia?”

Wanda smiles, then frowns. “I miss it,” she says softly. “Every day I miss the life I had before my parents died. Every day I miss Pietro. I miss my mom and dad. I miss the house. I miss home and everything that made it what it is.”

“This is my home,” says Natasha, gesturing around her. “Where I was raised… it was no home to me. We were both villains, once.”

“We were?”

“I was an assassin. Russian. They trained me to be a killer, a fighter. Clint Barton was sent to kill me, but he chose not to. And now, here I am.” She shrugged and gave a half-smile. “Home.”

Wanda’s face was horrified. “Did I send you back to that?” she asked, eyes wide.

“No! No,” says Nat hurriedly. “Not at all. The place you sent me back to was a happy place. But the memory… well, it happened to be just before I was taken by the KGB.”

Wanda grew more and more distressed. “Natasha, I’m so sorry-”  
“Don’t be. That forest was a happy place for me when I was a little girl.” She smiles. “I loved the snow. And I’m glad I saw it again.”

As she said it, she realized she was. She had forgotten or perhaps repressed the memories of her home before the Red Room. “I am glad,” she says. “Maybe I needed to see myself being that happy again.”

Wanda shakes her head and draws her knees up. “I did choose a happy memory from your mind. I did not look deeply,” she adds hurriedly, “I did not even look. The mind is a private place.”

“It’s not your fault, Wanda,” says Natasha firmly. “There is no way you could have known that forest would trigger memories.

Wanda nods. “I think you are right. But I still feel guilty. I caused you pain.”

“By mistake.”

“Even so!”

“Please don’t feel bad.”

Natasha’s voice is the gentlest Wanda has ever heard.

“Please don’t feel bad, Wanda. We have both made mistakes. We have both been terrible people with terrible goals. Hell, we’ve both tried to kill the Avengers. But we’ve changed. We still make mistakes but we’re better.”

She leans a bit closer to Wanda, who’s sitting next to her on the bed, just to make sure her message is sinking in. “Don’t blame yourself.”

Wanda nods again and smiles faintly. “Thank you, Natasha.”

Natasha gives a half-grin.

 _Goddamn, she’s_ **_gorgeous_** , thinks Wanda

 _Goddamn, she’s_ **_gorgeous_** , thinks Natasha.

Natasha shifts a bit in front of Wanda. Wanda looks apprehensive for a moment, but then a grin begins creeping over her face. “What is it, Natasha?” she asks.

“Call me Nat,” whispers Natasha.

And she stops hesitating.

 

Their lips connect and it’s an explosion of power. Wanda shudders against Natasha, her hands reaching up and around her back to pull her closer. Natasha clings hard to every part of Wanda she can reach, drawing Wanda around her. Wanda smiles against their lips. Her hands light up and red light swirls around the two of them, drawing them closer and closer together. Natasha breaks the kiss but resumes it, more passionately than before. Wanda reciprocates every bit and the red light grows brighter and brighter. Their hands match and interlace. Their bodies touch all the way up, their hands are exploring, and neither has ever felt so on fire.

 

When the kiss ends at last, they’re both a mess. Wanda’s jacket is on the floor and her dress is half off. Natasha’s hair is all over her face and her lips are smeared all over with Wanda’s lipstick.

 

“Shall we continue?” she asks teasingly, half out of breath.

 

Wanda stretches out a hand and her door locks itself in a splash of red magic.

 

“We shall.”


End file.
